Dead Line

By Brian McGrory

Lauded by critics and Washington insiders alike for his debut novel The Incumbent, and its national bestselling sequel, The Nominee, Brian McGrory returns with the third sensational thriller featuring intrepid newspaperman Jack Flynn.
For his entire career, Jack Flynn has been like a heat-seeking missile in pursuit of news, with the exclusive goal of splashing his revelations on the pages of his beloved Boston Record. But now he comes across a story that might be the hardest -- and maybe the last -- of his life.
Jack is the recipient of an explosive tip involving Toby Harkins, the fugitive leader of an Irish mafia and estranged son of none other than Boston Mayor Daniel Harkins. Toby also happens to be the prime suspect in the heist of a dozen priceless treasures from the Gardner Museum -- the largest unsolved art theft in American history. But no sooner does the morning paper hit the newsstands with Jack's shocking story than a beautiful young woman, the mysterious whistleblower, is shot in the head. As Jack digs into a conspiracy that winds from the back rooms of City Hall to the genteel parlors of proper Boston, he must come to terms with the fact that he has caused an innocent's death, and that the FBI may be using him in a deadly game of cat and mouse in which the players involved aren't nearly who or what they seem. As a result, Jack begins to question the integrity of the job to which he has devoted his adult life.
Engaging, suspenseful, and crackling with newsroom energy, Dead Line once again offers the kind of explosive action that's all in a day's work for Jack Flynn, a hero whose dogged search for truth may not last him until press time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Release date: Jan 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9780743480345

Brian McGrory

Brian McGrory was a roving national reporter for the Boston Globe, as well as the Globe's White House correspondent during the Clinton administration. He is now a columnist in the newspaper's Metro section. The author of three bestselling thrillers -- The Incumbent, The Nominee, and Dead Line -- he lives in Boston. Find out more at www.brianmcgrory.com.

Book preview

Prologue

Friday, September 19

Life shouldn’t be this complicated. That’s what Hilary Kane was thinking as she took another sip of overpriced red wine at the bar at Jur-Ne, a pretentiously slick lounge in the newer Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown Boston. Well, she was thinking of that and exactly what had made it so complicated.

On either side of her, two coworkers, Amanda and Erica, prattled on about the energy and emotions that go into raising only mildly maladjusted kids. Men in suits coming from their jobs with mutual fund companies and white-shoe law firms jostled past for much-needed drinks. The too-cool bartenders were taking their time serving $13 Dirty Martinis.

None of it had the slightest effect on Hilary, who continued to sip her wine at a rapid clip and stare out the movie screen–size windows at the fading light of the city streetscape.

She had become a bad cliché, she told herself, queuing up the scene yet again in the videocam of her mind. She had been in Phoenix the week before on a rare business trip, a legal conference that her boss had sent her to. She had called her fiancé, Chuck, at 11:00 P.M., Boston time, eight o’clock her time, to wish him good night. She had said she’d see him when she arrived home the next evening, Saturday, his birthday. They’d have a nice dinner at a restaurant where she had already made a reservation. She didn’t tell him that she planned a morning surprise.

And that’s what she did. A few hours after her call, she climbed aboard the redeye flight from Sky Harbor International to Logan Airport. She took a cab to their Beacon Hill apartment. As she walked into the building foyer with her luggage in her hand, she had this vision that she’d find him standing before the bathroom mirror, shaving, the stereo playing Clapton or maybe B. B. King. She could picture the wide grin that would break out across his handsome face, the deep, familiar hug, the I-missed-yous and the happy birthdays as the two tumbled into their king-size bed.

She put the key into the hole and turned the lock. She nudged the door open with her shoulder. She walked into a silent apartment, and immediately, she knew something was wrong.

The first thing she smelled was Chinese food, and she looked over to her left at her loft-style apartment and saw open containers sitting on the coffee table next to a pair of used plates and two empty wineglasses. When she moved closer, she saw one of the glasses was smeared with lipstick. One of Chuck’s shirts was tossed haphazardly on the floor.

She looked slowly to her right, toward the rear of the apartment, her open bedroom area, her stomach churning so hard she thought she might throw up. She had known him a year and a half. When they first met, he was a high-flying software entrepreneur, about to sell his company to one of the giants for an obscene amount of cash. He was magnetic and charismatic and justifiably confident. It took him about an hour to have her completely charmed.

Then the sale fell through. His company washed out in the receding high-tech tide. He went from expectations of a hundred million dollars to barely having bus fare, so he moved out of his penthouse apartment and came to live with her.

He’d get up every morning, read the papers from front to back, then sit at her computer in the bay window and plot out the next big thing. She went off to her sometimes grinding job as a government lawyer. It wasn’t great, but it was a life. They were due to be married in six more months.

As she walked toward the back of the apartment, she heard her cat, Hercules, crying for help. Someone, she saw to her disgust, had shut him inside his tiny airline carrier. She looked at the rumpled bed, at the shoes—men’s and women’s—that were tossed haphazardly around it, at the clothing that littered the hardwood floor.

Then she focused on the closed bathroom door and listened for a moment to the pale sound of cascading water that came from within. She moved toward it, slowly, quietly, steadily, as if she were sleepwalking. She allowed her hand to rest for a moment on the brass knob. Then she pushed the door open, not forcefully, but decisively.

Instantly, she was met by humidity, the sound of the streaming water, the smell of lathered soap. She stood in the doorway staring through the floor-to-ceiling door of the glass-paneled steam-shower at her boyfriend having sex with a woman she had never previously seen, the shower jets pelting against their hair, the big droplets of water streaming down their respective bodies.

She stood watching them for an awkward, agonizing moment, as if they were an exhibit at a zoo, not out of any curiosity, but because neither of them had noticed her enter the room. Finally, she picked up a tube of toothpaste from the vanity and fired it at the shower door. Chuck whirled around and, in a voice muffled by the glass and water, called out, Honey, no!

She heard the woman ask, Is that her? At least that’s what she thought she heard. Chuck turned off the water. He flung open the door and grabbed two towels that were hanging on a nearby hook. He handed one to the blonde woman, who began unapologetically drying herself off as if she didn’t have a worry in the world.

We need to talk, Hil, Chuck kept saying as he tamped his body dry.

Standing in the doorway, she thought for a moment about retrieving the Big Bertha driver—his birthday gift—hidden in her closet and bashing in both of their skulls.

Instead, she looked at the floor and said, Get out. Both of you. What else, she wondered to herself, could you say?

She watched the blonde wrap the towel around her body and step out of the shower. Chuck stood there in the middle of the bathroom giving Hilary a pleading stare. Hilary walked back into the apartment and toward the front, setting herself down on a stool at the breakfast bar in her kitchen. A few minutes later, the woman walked wordlessly out of the apartment, Chuck about two minutes behind her. Hilary dissolved into tears and fury, and hadn’t seen him since.

Over at the Whitney School, they make the parents take a psychological test. If your kid gets in, it’s $18,000 for kindergarten. That’s when they should give you the damned test, to figure out if you’re crazy for paying it!

That was Erica, the coworker, a chinless, thirty-something woman in a Talbots’ suit who was racing uncontrollably toward an early middle age.

Amanda, who seemed to sport not only her chin, but Erica’s as well, said, Well, Hilary will live all this soon enough. She looked at their younger, far more attractive coworker and asked, What is it, six months until the big day?

The big day, Hilary thought to herself. Right. The big day was last week, the day that changed her life, the day that would forever leave her jaded.

But to them, she nodded halfheartedly and said, Yeah, six months. She hadn’t told anyone yet of her relationship’s horrific demise.

As Amanda launched into another question, the young bartender in black delivered Hilary another glass of wine. At that moment, a familiar man in a dark blue suit approached the three women, and Amanda and Erica greeted him as if they were in junior high, the former even shrieking his title—Mayor!—as she placed both hands on his wrist. Hilary, no great fan of the mayor’s, turned toward the bar and rolled her eyes. This was not shaping up to be the escapist cocktail hour she had hoped it would be.

At that point, the night became a case study of one thing turning into another. Specifically, two glasses of wine turned into six, Amanda and Erica eventually, reluctantly, turned and headed for the door. Mayor Daniel Harkins turned from a loathsome egomaniac into an emotional crutch, and still later, a potential conquest, someone who could make a tattered psyche feel whole again, even if only for a moment.

All of which explains how Hilary Kane and the mayor ended up at his apartment on the twenty-eighth floor of the Ritz-Carlton at 2:00 A.M., drunkenly and awkwardly pulling off each other’s clothes. She wanted to be desired, to be able to look in the mirror the next morning and know that this man absolutely had to have her.

After fifteen minutes of remarkably mediocre, alcohol-inhibited sex, Harkins placed a meaty forearm across his eyes and began to snore. Hilary climbed out of his bed, slowly and delicately, not out of any sense of courtesy, but for fear that if she woke him up, she’d have to spend another minute in his conscious presence. She pulled on her clothes—far quicker, she thought to herself, than the slutty blonde the week before.

She tiptoed outside his bedroom with her shoes in her hand, then sat on a high-back leather chair at a desk in his living room and looked at the blinking light on his computer. On the walls all around her were pictures of the mayor with various governors, senators, presidents, movie stars, and heads of state. She felt cheap in a way that she had never felt before: pathetic, insecure, and needy. She thought for a moment about quickly logging on to her email account to check one more time if Chuck had sent her a note of apology and explanation. She thought better of it, slipped her clogs on, and swiveled away from the desk.

But in a moment of weakness, standing before the desk, she flicked the computer mouse with her hand and the monitor came alive with light. Rather than a desktop, she was staring at a Word document, a file called Toby. She began scanning, and her hand instinctively rose to her mouth in fascination. She scrolled down, gripped by its contents, listening intently for any sounds from the bedroom. As she reached the second of what looked to be several pages, she struck the Print button.

The printer emitted the labored sounds of warming up, then began slowly churning out pages. As it did, Hilary clicked the Window field, saw another file called TOBY 2, and clicked on it. A new document, loaded with facts and names, filled the screen. She hit Print again.

She began collecting pages from the printer, when it suddenly froze up. A box appeared on the computer screen telling her she was out of paper. She looked in the printer basket and estimated she was about one page shy. A sound came from the bedroom, Danny the dolt rising to his drunken feet. She rolled the papers up in her hand, clicked on OK on the Out of paper box, and made for the door. The lights on the printer continued to blink a warning.

She pulled the door slowly shut behind her and bolted down the long hallway. What she needed was a taxicab. What she wanted was a shower. What she didn’t know was that the beginning of the end was upon her.

Chapter One

Monday, September 22

The moment, or rather, the episode, might be the ultimate proof of that old sports axiom that only fools try to predict the future in that little jewel box of a ballyard called Fenway Park. The fool in this case: Me. I was sitting in a field box, third row behind the visitors’ dugout, great seats courtesy of my editor, Peter Martin. Well, okay, it wasn’t actually Martin’s courtesy as much as my bribery that got me the seats. I offered him dinner at any restaurant in town for the company tickets, and Martin, having absolutely no appreciation for the consequences of this great athletic event, grabbed the bait. I’ve always believed it’s food, not love, that conquers all.

So it’s one of those crystal clear late September nights when Boston seems to be the absolute epicenter of the entire world. Suntans have faded. People have stormed back into town refreshed from a summer spent in Vermont, or Maine, or on Cape Cod. The city is filled with men in dark suits and red ties handing fistfuls of cash to young valets in front of swank restaurants with front doors lit by gas torches. Half the women on Newbury Street look like they just came from a Cosmo photo shoot. I swear, you could strike a match off their calves, if they let you, though they probably wouldn’t, not, at least, until making more formal acquaintance.

Ahem, anyway. The leaves were just showing their first hint of color. The air had a slight nip to it, and the breeze a bit of an edge—enough of one, as a matter of fact, to take Nomar Garciaparra’s lead-off line drive in the bottom of the eighth inning and turn it from a sure-thing home run to a sliding double that bounced hard off the left field wall, the famed Green Monster.

So Nomar’s on second. The Sox are playing the Yankees. Need I say more? Well, yes, I do. They trail the Yankees 3–1 in the game, and they lag two games behind them in the East Division of the American League, with only a handful of games left in the season. To say this was an important game is like saying Jack Flynn only covers major stories. You don’t need to; we’re all too sophisticated for it; it’s just one of those things in life that’s automatically known among those accustomed to being in the know, and even those who aren’t.

With Nomar taking a short lead, Manny Ramirez, batting cleanup, draws a walk, putting men on first and second, nobody out, David Ortiz coming to the plate.

Here’s where the prediction stuff comes in. I turned to Elizabeth, my girlfriend, the brilliant, gorgeous one on my left with the pouty lips and the legs so achingly long it actually hurts her to fold herself into these seats, and I said, My bet is, he bunts. I mean, of course he’s going to bunt. Not only do you put both men in scoring position, but you take out the prospect of a late-inning, rally-dousing double play.

Elizabeth doesn’t say anything, not because she doesn’t have thoughts on this exact issue. I’m sure she did. But she’s not there. I vaguely remember her telling me something about the women’s room and heading out to look for a couple of those delightful Cool Dogs with the warm chocolate topping.

Instead, I’m looking at a short, middle-aged guy with stubby legs in loose-fitting jeans and a bored expression on his ruddy face. He looks like he took a wrong turn at the $2 window over at Suffolk Downs. I mean, he’s the only guy within 200 miles of Fenway Park who’s bored on this night.

That seat’s taken, I tell him.

He doesn’t reply. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rivera wind up and deliver. I turn back to the game, watch Ortiz lower his bat like he’s going to bunt—I knew it—and the ball zip past him and into the catcher’s mitt. Strike one.

I said, that seat’s taken.

Still, no answer. He’s just kind of looking at me out of these deadened eyes, not even paying attention to the most pivotal game of the season, but hardly paying attention to me, either. Again, Rivera winds up, but this time Ortiz swings away—what the hell’s he doing?—and misses. Strike two.

I watch Ortiz in disbelief. I look at the third base coach to see if maybe a signal was crossed or missed. Then I remember the clown beside me.

Sir— I begin. I hear the crack of a bat. Two men in the seats in front of me scream in unison. The entire crowd rises to its collective feet. The ball, a simple gleam of white, soars high into the air on its path toward nirvana, which in this case, is the right field bullpen. It’s going, it’s going, it’s, it’s—well, out of reach of the right fielder, bounding off the wall, squirting wildly around the turf. The damned wind knocked it down again.

Garciaparra scores from second. Ramirez comes chugging into third like he’s running from a burning building with twenty-five pounds of firefighting equipment draped across his back. Ortiz stops on second: 3–2, nobody out, two men in scoring position.

I’m thinking that Elizabeth’s going to be furious she missed all this. Then that thought is replaced by my abiding hope that she found the Cool Dogs. And finally it occurs to me that I’ve sat with her for three hours, seven-and-a-half innings, and the Sox scored a single run, and on a throwing error at that. This mute’s been sitting next to me for five minutes and we’re about to blow the game open. Now I don’t want to sound superstitious or anything like that, but just to make sure he was in no unnecessary rush to leave, I turned to him and said, Jesus Christ, pal, what a game, huh?

He still didn’t reply. The entire stadium is up on its feet, everyone clapping in an audible frenzy, and he’s just sitting there looking at me, but really looking at nothing at all.

Undaunted, I said, Great seats, no? Read: Don’t be rushing anywhere, there, MVP. You may be the entire reason for this turn of fortune.

Trot Nixon comes to the plate. He takes the first pitch for a ball. The crowd calms itself down and everyone takes their seats. Elizabeth is still down in concessions hell—exactly where I want her right now, bless her heart, not to mention the rest of her gorgeous body.

I leaned back in my seat, casually turned to my silent friend, and said, Truth is, I think Trot’s the best clutch hitter on the club.

He replied, You Jack Flynn?

Ding, ding, ding. I knew this was some sort of Christ figure, or maybe Christ himself, descending from the heavens to push the Red Sox to their first World Series win in 85 years, and he’s about to let me in on his secret.

Nixon swung and missed. I turned to my seatmate and stared him up and down, allowing some of my reporter’s skepticism to take hold. I asked, Why do you ask?

He was just sitting there, his eyes so dull we might as well have been sitting in the last pew of the Holy Name Cathedral on a Sunday morning rather than the box seats of Fenway Park during a one-run game against the Yankees in the middle of the best pennant race we’ve had in this city in twenty years.

Because if you are, I have some information for you.

Well, there you have it, my biggest weakness—information, well, along with beautiful women, great food, and handsome dogs, specifically retrievers.

Crack.

I whirled toward the action to see an arching fly ball to center field, more shallow than I or anyone else in the park would have liked. The outfielder caught it. Ramirez tagged up and headed for home. It’s a shame they don’t have public transportation right on the playing field because it probably would have gotten him there faster.

As it was, the catcher caught the throw, completed half that day’s New York Times crossword puzzle, then tagged Ramirez out. Double play. To Ramirez’s credit, it took him so long to run home that it allowed Ortiz to tag up and get to third.

Back to the man beside me. I asked, What is it you have?

You’re Mr. Flynn?

No, my father’s Mr. Flynn. He’s dead, though. I just go by Jack. Jack Flynn.

I sounded like Bond, James Bond, when I said that, but not really.

My fellow fan said, "From the Record, right?"

I nodded.

I have a group of associates who want to meet you after the game, in the Boston Cab Company garage. If you’re not there within thirty minutes of the last out, they’re gone, and they’ll take the information somewhere else. We have a story of crucial importance that we’d like to give you.

His instructions were formal, rehearsed, as if he had gone over them many times in what I was starting to understand was his tiny mind. Deviation didn’t seem to suit him well, as when I replied, Not likely. But who are your associates?

He fumbled for a moment, collected himself, and returned to the script, You will see them soon enough. Mr. Flynn, people’s lives depend on your getting this story. Life and death. It’s in your hands.

Crack.

Again, I turned back to the infield and saw batter Jason Varitek racing toward first base. The right fielder was sprinting toward the foul line, heading directly at the Pesky Pole. I saw a blur of white disappear in the short right field stands. I heard a deafening roar. I began clapping along with the rest of civilization, stamping my feet, hollering my approval, until I couldn’t clap, stamp, or holler anymore.

Then, flush with bravado, I turned back to my mystery man and said, Tell your friends to go fuck themselves.

Elizabeth, standing beside me holding a Cool Dog in each hand, an impassive look on her utterly flawless face, held one out to me and casually replied, Why don’t you go tell them yourself.

I accepted the ice cream and said, No, no, I wasn’t talking to you.

She looked at me curiously. I cast a glance up the aisle, in search of my messenger, but he was nowhere to be found. Elizabeth said, I had to go all the way over to the first base side to track these things down. You better like it.

Oh, I do. I do. I spread some warm chocolate sauce across mine. The Red Sox put New York down one-two-three in the top of the ninth, advancing to within a game of first place. But it ends up, now that the game was over, the night’s excitement had just begun.

Chapter Two

I don’t want to sound melodramatic and make this seem like I was meeting an unknown informant in an underground parking garage in the dark of an unfriendly night. That would be a lie. The garage was at street level.

The Boston Cab Company is located in one of those warehouse-style buildings on the outfield end of Fenway, tucked among the artists’ lofts and sprawling dance clubs that encircle much of the park. Elizabeth and I filed out of the stadium with the rest of a happy humanity, and outside, on Yawkey Way, she grabbed my arm with both her hands in that affectionate way she has and said, You pick the place, I’ll buy the beer.

It was one of those increasingly common situations that required an ever so slightly delicate touch, for the following reasons: My name is Jack Flynn. If that’s not enough of a description, and much to my professional chagrin, in most cases, it’s not, I’m a reporter for The Boston Record, as the lucky messenger pointed out during the game. Actually, I’m the best reporter I know, though with a caveat. My editors often tell me I don’t know a lot—jokingly, I think, or at least I hope.

Anyway, Elizabeth Riggs is also a reporter, though with The New York Times, her beat being New England and all the news that’s fit to print about it. That’s a little newspaper humor there. Admittedly, she didn’t laugh the first time I used it either.

The point here being that because we work for two papers that might be considered rivals, I can’t always share with Elizabeth every facet and nuance of my day, nor she with me. At least we both understood that, so I said to her, Something work-related suddenly came up. Very suddenly. I have to go meet a guy. I don’t have a clue about how long I’ll be, but I suspect not very.

We were standing on the street outside of Gate A, with what felt like the entire baseball-loving world jostling past us. My emotions were admittedly mixed. On the one hand, the Sox had won. I had tickets to the next night’s game. I wanted nothing more than to sashay into some bar with the most beautiful woman in town and celebrate what it means to be in the throes of an epic pennant race during the greatest month in the greatest city in the world.

On the other hand, this was Monday night, September 22. On Wednesday, the aforementioned Elizabeth would be boarding a flight that would take her to a new life in California, where she would become the San Francisco bureau chief for the Times. The prospect of her departure left me feeling somewhere between uneasy and morose, and standing there staring into the biggest, bluest eyes I might ever see in my life, I didn’t like the fact that I was being dragged off on what would likely prove to be a goose chase, and one that probably wouldn’t be all that wild. Good-byes are always tough, tougher still when you’re not there to give them.

Elizabeth didn’t ask any more questions. She had been as distracted as I had lately, wondering about her new job, wondering about her new life in a faraway city, wondering what the future held for us, as a couple, or not as a couple, whichever the case might be. All good questions, the last of which we had fastidiously avoided. She pushed her hair out of her face, kissed me softly on the lips, and said, If I’m asleep when you get home, wake me up and fuck me.

Just one more reason why I love the woman.

Elizabeth and I went our separate ways, she heading to our waterfront apartment, me toward, well, I’d soon find out. Blind tips and unknown sources, by the way, aren’t anything particularly novel in my business. In fact, this is how we get much of our best information—from people who care enough, or are angry enough, or hell, even vengeful enough—to reach out to reporters and push dark facts into the glare of publicity. The flip side is, most of these leakers and sources don’t have much of a clue as to what comprises a great or important story. Their idea of a bombshell is often my idea of a New England News Brief, relegated to the middle of the second section if it deserves to be in the paper at all. But you never arrive at the occasional gold mine without slogging your way through so many veins of pyrite.

Which explains my thoughts as I arrived in front of the closed garage door of the Boston Cab Company, exactly thirty-five minutes after the game ended, meaning I was five minutes late. I didn’t think it would be a problem, mostly because I had it in my mind that this wouldn’t be a particularly useful excursion.

I walked past the garage, to an unmarked steel door with a simple knob, and pushed against it. The door, to my surprise, opened up into a dark room, which I assumed to be some sort of office or dispatch area. I stared around, looking for desks or computers or anything that might tell me where I was and why I was there, until my eyes slowly adjusted and I realized I was staring into the black expanse of the garage, completely still and seemingly empty. There wasn’t a light on in the place, the only wan illumination coming from the open door just behind me.

The sound was that of utter silence. The odor was a dull potpourri of transmission fluid, motor oil, windshield wash, and engine coolant.

Hello, I hollered. My voice echoed back off the walls and cement floors, then dissolved into the dark like sugar into black coffee. There was no response.

This is Jack Flynn, I yelled. Normally I’d expect, or at least appreciate, cheering and hooting at such a dramatic proclamation. But again, only an echo, followed by silence.

Now mind you, the most dangerous thing most Record reporters encounter on any given day is lunch in the company cafeteria, especially on, say, Mexican theme day, what with Tony and Val at the grill making their version of a burrito or a plate of nachos. Even this didn’t seem dangerous as much as foolish. Frustrated, I turned around and headed for the door, looking forward to waking Elizabeth, at her request, from her slumber.

Just as I did, a light flicked on in a distant corner of the sprawling garage, and I whirled toward it. Actually, it was two lights—headlights, of the soft, blue halogen variety, heading directly toward me, though not fast, and perhaps even slow. I leaned against the doorway and waited for what was to come, which in this case was the car and whomever and whatever was in it.

The vehicle pulled to within a few feet of me and stopped, its engine revving, then calming. I still couldn’t tell the make, the color, who was driving, or how many people were inside. I didn’t know if it was a taxicab. All I could see were the headlights, the high beams striking me square in my eyes. I continued to lean in the doorway, trying to look casual, though admittedly curious as to what the hell was going on.

The rear passenger’s side door opened up, but nobody got out. The door just hung out there, beckoning, I suppose, but not really. I’ve always wanted my own driver, but the expectation if I ever get one is that I’d at least insist on knowing where he was taking me.

I heard the subtle sound of a purring motor, a power window descending, followed by the words, Mr. Flynn, get in. The voice seemed to be coming from the passenger side of the car. I recalled a scene like this from Lost in Space, but I think it involved an alien craft, not a four-door sedan.

Still leaning, I asked, Who are you?

We’ll explain all of that. Please, Mr. Flynn. Please.

The voice was neither pleasant nor overbearing, neither tentative nor demanding, more earnest than I might have expected to hear in an otherwise barren garage under circumstances as undefined as these.

Where are we going? I asked.

We’re going to get you a story. A big story.

Good answer. Right answer. How does someone in my shoes, an admitted news junkie, say no to that?

Why don’t I meet you there? I said this still staring into the teeth of the high beams, still seeing nothing at all.

Admittedly, that didn’t make a lot of sense, considering I didn’t know where there even was, but I was buying time, hoping they’d offer something more in terms of clues or agendas as I tried to delay the inevitable, which involved me getting into the rear seat of this mysterious car.

He replied with the magic words, "If you don’t want to get in, that’s your choice. We’ll give the Traveler a call."

Well, he certainly knew what buttons to press. I mean, I’ve been shot at by assassins, kicked in the head by white supremacists, threatened by governors, lied to by none other than the president of the United States. If you think I have a good sense of danger, then you’re right, and I was starting to sense it here. But all you have to do is tell me that The Boston Traveler, the city’s feisty little tabloid paper, might beat us to the proverbial punch and all appropriate caution is thrown to the side of a potholed road. It’s about how you want to live your life, and I like to live mine by getting to the story first.

So I walked around the headlights to the open rear passenger door. Outside of the glare, I saw that the car was some sort of dark-colored luxury model, perhaps a Lexus. I saw two men sitting in the front—the driver and the passenger who had goaded me into this act of stupidity—I mean, pursuit of a story. As I slid into the backseat, I couldn’t help but notice another man sitting there beside me, mostly because he had many of the same physical characteristics as a gorilla.

I settled into the leather seat, looked around at the three silent men, and said, Anybody want a stick of Juicy Fruit? Nobody laughed, I guess for good reason, though they might have seen their way to being polite. All three, by the way, were somewhere in their fifties, dressed in black windbreakers and dark pants. None of them looked like they knew the way to the executive washroom, if you know what I mean. The guy beside me was one of those barrel-chested types with Popeye forearms who’s either gone soft from age or forever retains his superhuman strength, though I wasn’t in any real rush to find out which was the case.

The guy in the front passenger seat, wearing a dark baseball cap—a Red Sox hat, no less—slung low over his forehead jumped out and shut my door behind me. I heard the power locks go down in unison. The wide garage door ascended with a jolting roar. No one in the car spoke—no one but me, who asked, You mind telling me where we’re headed?

Still, silence. I looked at the Cro-Magnon beside me. His face was wide and puffy, his nose broad and hooked, as if it had been broken in prior excursions. He had wisps of grayish-black hair, and his eyes, which stared back at me, were tiny and vacant. I could hear him breathe through his mouth.

I said, with a faint smile, Lots of legroom back here. As I said it, I looked down at his legs, which were short and stubby, mere afterthoughts to his huge torso. He didn’t reply.

Through the heavily tinted windows, I could see that the car was heading down Boylston Street, heading for downtown Boston. The car drove around the Public Garden, up and over Beacon Hill, and into the financial district, largely barren of people at this time on a Monday night, but for the occasional law firm associate trying to bill more hours than there are in a day.

I said, I would have thought Ortiz would have bunted. Lucky he didn’t.

More silence. Apparently no one felt like talking baseball, even after such a monumental win. Perhaps only their little messenger had been at the game. Or perhaps these guys were unschooled in the conversational arts.

By now, the car had driven through Government Center and pulled into a hulking downtown parking garage. I’ll confess, I didn’t quite get it. We left one garage only to arrive at another. The car kept circling through the building, heading upward toward the roof, around and around, past all the empty spaces. Finally, we pulled into a short section marked by signs that said, Reserved, Government Vehicles Only. The driver, who wore a baseball cap, glasses and the previously noted dark windbreaker, threw the car into park and hit the unlock button. The man in the passenger seat jumped out and opened my door.

Now I didn’t exactly feel like a hostage, but nor did I feel free to come and go, either. As I was walking, I noticed that these Blues Brothers knockoffs essentially had me surrounded, their shoes clicking on the concrete floor as they guided me toward a steel door.

One of them, the driver, placed a security badge against the door, and there was an audible click. He pushed the door open into a well-lit hallway, and the four of us proceeded down a short, austere corridor amid our practiced silence.

At a second steel door, same routine. Inside, though, the hallways were carpeted, the lighting softer. We kept walking, took a left, then a quick right, and suddenly I found myself in an outsize office with a mustachioed man in a light blue windbreaker over a shirt and loosely knotted tie sitting behind an enormous wooden desk.

He stood up. The three men backed out behind me. The office door closed with a soft click.

Good evening, Mr. Flynn, the man said, his whiskers twitching as he spoke in a gentlemanly farmer kind of way. Nice of you to come out here at this hour. I appreciate that very much.

He came around the desk and shook my hand, all friendly and familiar, as if we knew each other, though I had never met him before.

I replied, just as breezily, I’m not entirely sure I had a choice.

He gave me a low laugh while meeting my gaze. Oh, you did. You certainly did. And you’re free to go at this very moment if you’d like. I’ll even have my—and he paused here for a sliver of a second— associates drive you right to your house. His mustache twitched again as he flashed a wry smile.

That’s obviously not what I wanted for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that I was within walking distance of my home, but